A couple of weeks ago, a think piece I wrote for African Independent and Business Report caused a bit of a stir on Twitter. The hubbub surrounds my tackling of the sensitive issue of investor bias that appears to be prevalent in Africa's startup

A couple of weeks ago, a think piece I wrote for African Independent and Business Report caused a bit of a stir on Twitter. The hubbub surrounds my tackling of the sensitive issue of investor bias that appears to be prevalent in Africa's startup finance scene.

Cited in the piece are research findings published in a recent Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded report by the American VC outfit, Village Capital. According to the report, more than 90% of the funding that's gone into East African fintech startups over the past year or two has benefitted firms with expatriate founders. This has lead to some local founders complaining that their ventures aren't being fairly appraised for investibility in terms of their potential and financial viability.

In this episode of the African Tech Round-up, Musa Kalenga and I are joined by Tapsnapp founder and CEO, Vije Vijendranath, to unpack some of the impassioned response to the investor bias debate that's recently surfaced from certain quarters within our tech community and to chat about some possible solutions to the situation.

Then, being that Tapsnapp is surfing the "Uberisation of everything" trend, and given the current push-back Uber is experiencing in South Africa from various stakeholders, Musa, Vije and I decided to try and answer the question: how enthusiastically should Africans embrace on-demand marketplace platforms?

According to a ruling made by South Africa's Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), an employer-employee relationship does, in fact, exist between Uber and driver-partners. This follows Uber being dragged to the CCMA several months ago by seven driver-partners who alleged that they

According to a ruling made by South Africa's Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), an employer-employee relationship does, in fact, exist between Uber and driver-partners. This follows Uber being dragged to the CCMA several months ago by seven driver-partners who alleged that they were unfairly deactivated by the service.

The ride-hailing service has long contended that it is simply a virtual marketplace that connects drivers and passengers and not an employer-- citing the fact that Uber doesn't own cars or have drivers on their payroll.

In this African Tech Round-up episode, Musa Kalenga and I discuss some of the legal implications of this ruling, and how they might compromise Uber's business model.

It's no secret, Africa's largest tech company by market cap, Naspers, has been buckling under the pressure to perform for some years now. The fact is, the company hasn't scored any big wins in any of the legacy internet and pay-TV verticals it once

It's no secret, Africa's largest tech company by market cap, Naspers, has been buckling under the pressure to perform for some years now. The fact is, the company hasn't scored any big wins in any of the legacy internet and pay-TV verticals it once used to dominate with ease.

Naspers' most recent financial results seem to validate the notion that except for the firm's exceedingly lucrative 33 percent stake in the Chinese cash cow that is Tencent, there seems to be little else to write home about in terms of outstanding performance.

In this episode of the African Tech Round-up, Musa Kalenga and I discuss the merits of an open letter penned by a certain Albert Saporta - the managing director of the Geneva-based investment advisory firm and Naspers shareholder, AIM&R - accusing Naspers CEO Bob van Dijk of destroying approximately $25.6 billion of shareholder value since his appointment more than three years ago. Sniper!

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The Sub-Saharan Africa heads of the likes of Huawei, Oracle, Cisco, IBM and perhaps even Amazon, Facebook and Google, have no doubt already booked first class tickets to Lilongwe to advise the Malawian government on what to do with the $72.4 million line

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The Sub-Saharan Africa heads of the likes of Huawei, Oracle, Cisco, IBM and perhaps even Amazon, Facebook and Google, have no doubt already booked first class tickets to Lilongwe to advise the Malawian government on what to do with the $72.4 million line of credit the country has secured from the World Bank to "help Malawi build the digital foundations needed to help the country connect to the global digital economy". This development comes in the wake of the World Bank resuming "budget support financing" for Malawi in May 2017 after a four-year hiatus.

In this African Tech Round-up, Musa Kalenga and I discuss some of the things that Malawian policy-makers ought to prioritise as they engage with potential technology partners. News like this helps contextualise some of the sentiments expressed by David Meads, Cisco's Africa business head, in a recent IoT-focussed chat I had with him, in which he highlighted his organisation's commitment to assisting African governments with their digital transformation efforts. If you missed that conversation, click here to check it out.

Heads up... This episode was taped before Uber announced that Travis Kalanick would be stepping down as the company's CEO, so Musa and I didn't take that more recent piece of news into account when discussing Uber's travails.

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This week's African Tech Round-up is dedicated to sharing insights gleaned from the recent Internet of Things World Forum hosted in London. The global IT and networking giant, Cisco, convened the invite-only gathering to facilitate dialogue among key stakeholders and innovators in business, government and academia and to “bring industry leaders together to collaborate, network, partner and solve the challenges facing IoT”.

To ascertain how the trend towards IoT adoption is likely to impact African enterprises and citizens alike I caught up with Dimension Data’s global director for the Internet of Things, Anton Jooste, David Meads, who heads up Cisco’s Africa business, Prathap Dendi, who is the general manager for emerging technologies at the application performance management and IT operations analytics start-up, AppDynamics, as well as Alan Griffiths of Cambashi-- an analyst specialising in industrial IoT, cloud computing, and their effect on the technical software applications market.

Using the biggest tech and innovation headlines from the past couple of weeks as a springboard, we chat candidly about everything from major broadband infrastructure developments to cyber security issues-- touching on the implications of M-PESA's imminent interoperability and even discussing the hectic politics of Africa's startup funding scene.

Subscribe on iTunes | Subscribe on AndroidEtop Ikpe and his team at the Nigerian vehicle marketplace, Cars45.com, are no doubt feeling great following the successful close of the company's $5 million Series A funding round a couple of weeks ago. Given the tough time Nigeria's e-commerce industry has been

Subscribe on iTunes | Subscribe on AndroidEtop Ikpe and his team at the Nigerian vehicle marketplace, Cars45.com, are no doubt feeling great following the successful close of the company's $5 million Series A funding round a couple of weeks ago. Given the tough time Nigeria's e-commerce industry has been having of late, the significance of this achievement is not lost on us.

Previously the Commercial Director of Konga-- one of Nigeria’s largest online shopping platforms, and formerly the CEO and Co-MD of DealDey, Etop is unquestionably an e-commerce veteran at this point. In this episode of the African Tech Round-up, he explains why Nigeria's e-commerce scene hasn't lived up to many of the lofty expectations that were set for it five or six years ago.

Also in this show, I chat with Ammin Youssouf, who formerly founded and helmed the celebrated creative agency, Big Youth, before co-founding and serving as CEO at Afrobytes Ventures. Listen in to hear what Ammin and his team have in store for those of us attending Europe's premier Africa-focussed tech gathering, the Afrobytes Tech Conference on June 8th and 9th 2017.

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Scientists have found a way to remove the HIV virus from the DNA in mouse cells using CRISPR/Cas9 technology. According to the journal, Molecular Therapy, use of the technique has led to the complete elimination of infection in mouse organs and tissue after

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Scientists have found a way to remove the HIV virus from the DNA in mouse cells using CRISPR/Cas9 technology. According to the journal, Molecular Therapy, use of the technique has led to the complete elimination of infection in mouse organs and tissue after just one treatment. Now, that's the kind of international tech news that really gets us excited around here!

And, yes! The team at the African Tech Round-up is back from a much-needed break, and we're super-stoked to catch up on news like this CRISPR HIV breathrough, as well as itching to dive into some of the other significant headlines that dropped while we were away.

I'm pleased to announce that Musa Kalenga will be joining me as a guest co-host on the show every fortnight starting this week to chat about the most important stories and to unpack major trends impacting Africa's tech ecosystem.

Enjoy this candid fireside chat with the talented digital specialist, marketing maven, author, former Group Head of Digital Marketing at Nedbank, former Africa Client Partner at Facebook, current Head of Brand at IAB South Africa, and Founder and CEO of a new adtech startup called Microtising, Musa Kalenga.

In this conversation, Musa shares loads of insights on starting up in Africa, and talks about the challenges of navigating Africa's corporate digital scene.

In case you missed it, watch this highlights video to get a load of the vibe at the recent State of the Startup live podcast recording:

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This is our 100th episode! To everyone who's ever listened in to the show, interacted with us via social media, recommended the podcast to other people, made an audio contribution, emailed a comment or question, been featured as a guest, attended one of our

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This is our 100th episode! To everyone who's ever listened in to the show, interacted with us via social media, recommended the podcast to other people, made an audio contribution, emailed a comment or question, been featured as a guest, attended one of our live events, tuned in to a live stream on Facebook, or even come on board as a podcast/event sponsor, thank you. We all did this. The love is real, and we salute you!

We've done our best to deliver the biggest digital, tech and innovation headlines from Africa and beyond while offering candid analysis and commentary, as well as useful insights gleaned from some of the Africa's leading entrepreneurs, executives, investors and technical talent.

The conversation we're sharing on this week's show brings things full-circle in that I finally got to meet the Texas-based Nigerian, Bola Lawal, in person at our recent event-- after they interacted online, brought together by the podcast. It's humbling to realise how this little podcast has grown into a lively international community of people-- Africans and otherwise, who are actively involved and/or care deeply about the continent's growing tech ecosystem.

Bola is one of the co-founders of ScholarX, an app designed to help African students access scholarships abroad. In this chat, he talks about how ScholarX is committed to helping Africans access the very best education possible through scholarships, and he gives his take on the emergence of MOOC's and eLearning in general.

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Mobile telcos on the continent are certainly having a rough time of it on the continent. In the same week that MTN South Africa CEO, Mteto Nyati, announced his resignation, a consortium of banks including Guaranty Trust Bank, Access Bank and Zenith Bank reportedly

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Mobile telcos on the continent are certainly having a rough time of it on the continent. In the same week that MTN South Africa CEO, Mteto Nyati, announced his resignation, a consortium of banks including Guaranty Trust Bank, Access Bank and Zenith Bank reportedly assumed control of Etisalat Nigeria over an outstanding $1.72 billion loan.

Media reports suggesting that Etisalat Nigeria has failed to meet its debt servicing obligations since 2016 have led to speculation over what might have contributed to this crisis-- could it be unsound management decisions or simply an unfortunate consequence of operating in Nigeria's recessionary environment?

In this week's African Tech Round-up, Simon Dingle joins Andile on the show to comment on the week's biggest headlines and to discuss the import (or lack thereof) of Bitcoin reaching price parity with gold, as well as to share insights on the exciting potential of blockchain technology to revolutionise monetary regimes on the continent.

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Whatever you think of Nokia's re-introduction of the legendary 3310 device, you've got to hand it to HMD Global for completely owning Mobile World Congress 2017 in terms of capturing headlines. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to recall any other major announcement made at the world's premier mobile showcase this

Whatever you think of Nokia's re-introduction of the legendary 3310 device, you've got to hand it to HMD Global for completely owning Mobile World Congress 2017 in terms of capturing headlines. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to recall any other major announcement made at the world's premier mobile showcase this year.

In this week's African Tech Round-up, I'm joined by Zambian author, speaker and marketer extraordinaire, Musa Kalenga, to work out how much of the hype surrounding Nokia's new, old "dumbphone" is actually deserved, and whether the handset has the potential to do well in Africa should they decide to roll it out here.

You should also tune in to hear Musa factor in on some of the biggest headlines from the last couple of weeks, as well as to hear him unpack insights from a second book he has in the works, The Kalenga Conundrum-- which is just one of the many projects keeping him very busy in the wake of giving up his client partner role at Facebook Africa in recent weeks.